Taking control: How to empower yourself against self-deprecation!

Self-deprecation is belittling oneself. It is a fruit and manifestation of behavior in a person; caused by parenting which was characterized by negative or inconsistent words, behavior and action especially during the first eight years of socializing a child.

Self-deprecation concept!

Confidence is a learned behavior.
 It is a result of successful parenting

You are a spirit being with a soul living in a body. Deprecation is a form of a learned behavior consisting of seven character-flaws; greed, self-destruction, stubbornness, arrogance, impatience and martyrdom. From birth an infant uses all senses to learn and adapt to the environment it is born into. Parents' tone of voice, non-verbal cues and practices provide nurturing atmosphere of love and security or fear, uncertainly and withdrawal. An infant recognize reinforcement and disapproval and associates these with its actions. When disapproval is communicated with positive words and action, they support positive exploration of the environment. Constant harsh rebuke will result in low self-worth and manifest as deprecation.

How to empower yourself against self-deprecation!

Empowerment start with critical thinking exercise wherein you identify undesirable thoughts, words and actions which do not tally with the inner strong sense of self which clearly speak differently from you mind.  If you want to change, do not take this dual talk lightly; sit down and really look inside you:

1.    Socialization: All people depending on the quality of socialization principles, adopt a positive or negative self-talk. The key is identifying deprecation cues:  Thoughts that magnifies your blemishes, words through which you strip yourself naked alone or in front of others; and low-key actions that lacks determination and vigor to do well in whatever you do!

2.    The ideal you: Write down words that closely describe what the positive voice within you says about you.  Please note that from the spiritual perspective, you are unique and most dearly loved by your Creator. The positive voice never threatens you; it gently guides and stirs you towards productive thoughts – noble, just, lovely, praiseworthy and generally motivated by unconditional love of self and others. The fact is, your parents and other social institutions had failed to develop or point you to this godly self, whose function is to energize you and reveal your uniqueness.  Deprecation is judging yourself to the point of hate, which is abomination to God because He created you as a whole and fruitful being.

3.    Spiritual self: Your spiritual self is complete - wise and knowing the truth about your given talents and spiritual gifts. It is in this realm that you can decide to take a step of faith to take control of your life. How? Life is what you make of it! The key is deciding to allow the stronger you – spiritual self - to dominate your negative mind by believing that you are indeed a fully functional person with a clear purpose for your life. Secondly, in full consciousness, let go of the past by re-writing who you are through affirmation and meditation. You can never change the past; you can however influence your future if you engage in purposeful configuration of your mind.  When you make effort to ward off negative thoughts that limit your momentum to your established goals, they become noise; and that enables you to stop them before they develop to the next level of actions.

4.    Determined plan to change: The consistent positive self-talk will not only override your traumatic childhood experiences, but will give you intrinsic motivation to rise above challenges as you re-socialize yourself to listen to your heart and learn to act fast when your intuition affirms a way to go.

Deprecation thrives when you stay in the past and continually re-open your emotional wounds. Those who socialize you deserve your conscious pardon; simply forgive everyone for withholding their unconditional love and coaching you to be a functional person. Regardless of the level of harm, you have power and ability to change who you are and be fully present! If you want to move from deprecation, go for counseling first and then hire a coach to walk with you to your freedom!

Taking control: Are you sure you do not suffer from low self-esteem?

Most people have suffered some form of uncertainty with regard to ability to make friends, fear to participate in sports and class and accepting body shape or height. We encourage you to evaluate if you still have low self esteem!

What is low self-esteem?

It is an irrational interpretation, caused by negative perception of messages from parents and significant others involved in socializing a child during the first eight years of life. The mind retains these negative feedbacks and archives them; manifesting as various defense mechanism against a perceived hostile world. A person suffering from low self-esteem is concerned about failure and will dwell on possible problems. It is a norm to over-analyze hurdles rather than focus on success. A person is not conscious of the inner strength nor able to access intrinsic motivation to think and act according to own perception.  In other words, the tendency is to look for ideal situation to get going when faced with challenging environment instead of acting on own faith to succeed with inadequate available resources.

The contributing factors and outcome of low self-esteem!

The major cause of low self-esteem is withholding affection, negative talk or actions when correcting behavior during socialization.  Corporal punishment is still practiced by some parents who have low parenting skills or are victims of physical and emotional abuse themselves.  A child needs unconditional love like other basic needs like food, security and shelter. Any deprivation will result in issues of self-esteem outlines as follows:

1.    Low self esteem in childhood: Manifest in cheating, bullying, defaulting in class, shy to participate in class which leads to becoming underachiever.

2.    Low self-esteem in adolescents and adulthood: A suffer is a loner and generally unhappy. Since a human being is a social being, low interaction with other children will result in poor communication skills, inability to make friends and becoming hostile. Unfriendly person tend to exude negative energy which disallow any form of relationship; thus isolating a suffer, and contributing to depression.

3.    Other relationships issues resulting from low self-esteem: The ideal scenario in making friends with others is compatibility in terms of both academic and economic levels unless is for mentorship. For an example, a university lecturer who dates a bus driver seeks continuity of unquestioned submission. It is a skewed relationship and it is loaded with possible emotional issues associated with manipulations.

How to overcome low-self esteem!

A person with high self-esteem focuses on self-development and maintains open mind to learn and utilize identified talents and spiritual gifts as follows:

1.    Objectively looks and analyzes behavior that is not proactive towards self development. Remember you cannot change what you have not identified as needing change.

2.    Identify your strengths -talents and spiritual gifts. A talent is a natural ability to easily learn and acquire identifiable skills depicted in Seven Intelligences: Visual – spatial, Bodily – kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Linguistic, and Logical – mathematical.  Spiritual gifts are supernatural abilities to undertake spiritual functions such as: word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, healings, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in different tongues and interpretation of different tongues.

3.    Focus on developing identified talents and spiritual gifts. It is good to know your weakness so that you can identify triggers; but never dwell in this corner!

4.    Hire a life-coach to assist you to review your goals and strategies as well as how to access resources in order to achieve them.

5.    Unlearn habits that are counter-productive to your personal growth and acceleration of momentum to your identified goals. Learn to say ‘no’ to situations or persons who derail you from your goals or contribute to procrastination.

People who suffer from low self-esteem fear making mistakes which is often mistaken for a virtue because that could be perceived as upholding high standards.  The condition is treatable through counseling and coaching. The latter is a positive approach to empowerment because it seeks to teach a sufferer how to identify and utilize inner strengths.